Mission Statement or Mantra: Which Do You Have?

By Deborah Chaddock Brown

Do you have a mission statement? What do you do with it? It is painted in your lobby, saved as a screen saver on your computer, tattooed on your arm?

There are lots of opinions about the value mission statements offer to a company’s success. In Denise O’Berry’s posting “Do I Need a Mission Statement for My Small Business?” she says: “The Sun Online Agency was commissioned to conduct a survey studying Fortune 1000 companies looking for trends over a 1 and 5 year period. The study was conducted through extensive online research along with a number of company interviews. Although 90% of the highest growth companies for 2006 had published mission statements, the most surprising difference was noted while looking at long-term growth over a 5-year period, where 98% of the 50 most profitable Fortune 1000 companies have mission statements in place.” http://www.allbusiness.com/operations/3357-1.html?postId=6984